by Rose Churma
Filipinos arrived in the islands due to Territorial Hawai’i’s need for labor and the promise of bettering their economic status.
However, low wages limited their access to a better life, thus triggering their active role in labor organizing, which continues to this day.
A confluence of recent events raised interest in the Filipino labor leader, Pablo Manlapit.
Although this book was published in 2002—more than two decades ago, it is as relevant and should be read to those who value the Filipinos’ role in Hawai’i’s labor history.
According to his family’s stories, the teen-aged Pablo tried to “run-away” three times and was successful in eluding his father the third time from being taken off the ship that was leaving Manila Bay for Hawaii.
His family was originally from Lipa, Batangas, known for its coffee. The young Pablo was nine years old when the Americans occupied Lipa and introduced a public system of education.
He completed his elementary and intermediate education in Lipa before the family moved to Manila. It must be through these Thomasites (American teachers sent to teach in the Philippines) that he learned English.
He later honed his English-speaking skills through his jobs at American companies when he and his family moved to Manila.
He arrived in Hawaii on 10 January 1910, seven days before he turned 19, and was immediately sent to work at Kuka’iau sugar plantation on the Big Island.
After working for just a week in the fields (he never had any experience as an agricultural field worker before), he was promoted to the foreman (luna), then later to the timekeeper. His ability to speak English worked in his favor.
But in 1913 when the price of the workers’ harvesting contract was reduced from $4.50 to $4.00 per hectare without notice, Manlapit led a strike with his fellow Filipino workers. Because of this, he was blacklisted and fired in the late 1913.
By then, he had been married to Annie Kasby who was of German American ancestry. Their oldest daughter Alice was born at the Kuka’iau sugar plantation in 1913 before the family was forced to leave the plantation.
The family moved to Hilo and Manlapit supported his family with various jobs—serving as a court interpreter, managing a pool hall, and publishing the weekly Ang Sandata.
By this time the Hawaii Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) had him under watch, but the sugar planters were unsuccessful in getting him convicted and out of circulation.
The family eventually moved to Honolulu in 1914 and Manlapit earned his livelihood by doing a variety of jobs—re-publishing his newspaper weekly in 1916 while working as a stevedore.
That same year, he joined the longshoremen’s strike and was beaten up when he admonished fellow Filipinos not to break strikes.
From 1918 to 1919 he worked for Attorney William J. Sheldon as a janitor and interpreter.
Manlapit studied his boss’ law books during his spare time and then applied for a license to practice law in Territorial Hawai’i.
He passed the required exams and was granted a license to “represent clients in the District Courts” on 19 December 1919. He would be the first Filipino to practice law in Hawai’i.
During these years, Manlapit was one of the few Filipinos who spoke up for the workers. However, unlike his Filipino comrades, he was not focused on Filipino issues alone but advocated for all workers regardless of their ethnic backgrounds.
Among those who shared the same view as Manlapit was Fred Makino, who spearheaded the Japanese Plantation strike of 1909, who after conviction and serving his prison time started the Hawaii Hochi, a Japanese-language newspaper.
Manlapit and Makino’s friendship survived the tests of time. Makino would be one of Manlapit’s dependable supporters throughout the hard times.
Despite the sugar planters’ desire to foster distrust between the Japanese and Filipino workers and their leaders, the two groups joined forces in the strike of 1920.
Manlapit survived the 1920 strike and all sorts of charges against him were dropped. But not for the majority of Japanese labor leaders who were convicted and sent to prison. The number of Japanese workers declined in the plantations, replaced mostly by new recruits from the Philippines.
In 1921, Pablo Manlapit was 30 years old and lived a comfortable life with his wife and four children as a practicing lawyer in Honolulu. He was a happy family man (and even had his photo taken at a studio as shown on the book’s cover) and kept abreast of news from the Philippines, but had no plans of returning. Hawai’i had become home for him and his family.
Instead of leading a quiet and comfortable life, his labor activities continued. By late 1922, Manlapit and George Wright, a labor organizer, launched the High Wages Movement, which gained momentum in 1923.
Among the demands of the group were an eight-hour work day, an increase to the minimum wage, double pay for overtime and Sunday work, better living conditions, equal pay for men and women doing the same work, and recognition of workers’ rights to collective bargaining—demands that we now take for granted.
The HSPA ignored the demands, such that the “…big strike of 1924 flowed like a slow-moving lava from April to September on the islands of O’ahu, Hawai’i, Maui, and Kaua’i.”
This would be the first strike that involved all major islands in the Territory of Hawai’i, and Pablo Manlapit was the acknowledged leader.
It would also be the most violent with the death of 16 strikers and four law enforcement officers on September 9, 1924, and came to be known as the “Hanapepe Massacre.”
Those in power back then believed that the strikers shot first and blamed the strike leaders for the tragedy in Hanapepe. In 1924, Manlapit faced several legal suits, one of which was a conspiracy charge lodged by the government. That trial started on September 15, a few days after the “Hanapepe Massacre” and was found guilty.
His defense attorney believed that Manlapit was “railroaded in the penitentiary.”
Manlapit’s family fell on hard times when he went to prison. His children were sent to the Kalihi Orphanage for temporary institutional care while his wife worked at a commercial laundry to survive.
From his prison cell, Manlapit fought for his release and was granted conditional parole, such that on 13 August 1927, he left for California. His parting letter was published the next day.
He wrote, “My offense was not against any law of morality or against any political statute but against a system of industrial exploitation…”
He was 36 years old, and little did he know then that his extraordinary life was just gaining momentum.
If the first three chapters of the book covered Manlapit’s life until his deportation to California, the last six chapters would describe the next decades of his life’s trajectory.
He would receive the pardon he deserved in 1952, and passed away at his country of birth in 1969 at the age of 78.
Although this book is primarily a biography of Manlapit, it is also “the closest work to a pre-World War II history of Filipino Americans in Hawaii” as Jon Okamura wrote in his review of the book.
This adds to the book’s merit as it captures the essence of what it was like to live in the plantation era from a Filipino worker’s perspective.
Melinda Tria Kerkvliet received her doctorate in history from the University of Hawai’i. Her book, Manila Workers’ Unions, 1900-1950, was published in 1992.
She is a former director of Operation Manong (now Office of Multicultural Student Services) at the University of Hawai’i.
She was fortunate to meet the children of Pablo Manlapit whose recollections of their father’s activities, hopes and dreams added depth to this biography.
As a member of the Filipino American Historical Society of Hawai’i (FAHSOH) she has conducted oral interviews with several Hawai’i residents to ensure that Filipinos’ contributions to Hawai’i are documented and preserved for future generations.
The best activity to commemorate this year’s Filipino-American History Month—read this book and be inspired.
ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.
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